Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
2008, 15 (3), 581-585
doi: 10.3758/15.3.581
Putting to a bigger hole:
Golf performance relates to perceived size
Jessica K. Witt
Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana
and
Sally A. Linkenauger, Jonathan Z. Bakdash, and Dennis R. Proffitt
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia
When people are engaged in a skilled behavior, such as occurs in sports, their perceptions relate optical information to their performance. In the present research, we demonstrate the effects of performance on size perception in golfers. We found that golfers who played better judged the hole to be bigger than did golfers who did not
play as well. In follow-up laboratory experiments, participants putted on a golf mat from a location near or far
from the hole and then judged the size of the hole. Participants who putted from the near location perceived the
hole to be bigger than did participants who putted from the far location. Our results demonstrate that perception
is influenced by the perceiver’s current ability to act effectively in the environment.
Performance affects the perceived size of an action’s
target. For example, softball players who are hitting well
judge the ball to be bigger than do players who have more
difficulty hitting (Witt & Proffitt, 2005). The notion that
action-related information such as performance levels affects perception challenges many past and current theories
of perception (e.g., Fodor, 1983; Pylyshyn, 2003). Most
theories consider perception to be an encapsulated process
that is informed solely by optical information and oculomotor adjustments. However, a growing body of research demonstrates that action abilities affect perceived size (Wesp,
Cichello, Gracia, & Davis, 2004; Witt & Proffitt, 2005),
distance (Proffitt, Stefanucci, Banton, & Epstein, 2003;
Witt & Proffitt, in press; Witt, Proffitt, & Epstein, 2004,
2005), and geographical slant (Bhalla & Proffitt, 1999).
In a study on softball players (Witt & Proffitt, 2005), we
found a significant correlation between batting average
for the game or games played on that night and judged ball
size. Players who had hit well recalled the size of the softball to be bigger than did those who hit less well, thereby
suggesting a relationship between perception and performance. However, a question remains as to who really sees
the ball as bigger. It could be the people who are more accomplished players, or it could be the people who played
better on that night. This question addresses the nature of
the effects of performance on perception. These effects
might be time dependent, in which case only players who
are playing well at the moment will see the ball as bigger,
or the effect might be quite general, in which case better
players always see the ball as bigger, independent of how
they are playing at any given time.
To better understand the effects of performance on
perception, we conducted a similar experiment with golfers. Golfers often comment on how their perception of
the hole varies with performance. Anecdotal and highly
exaggerated comments found in the sport’s press suggest
that on good days, the hole can look as big as a bucket or
a basketball hoop. On bad days, the hole can look as small
as a dime, an aspirin, or the inside of a donut. The optical information received by the eye is obviously the same
regardless of how well golfers are playing, so do golfers
really see the hole differently depending on their performance? And if so, is the effect due to their performance
on that day or to their general abilities to play golf? Either
way, the results would suggest that the perceived capacity
to successfully perform a goal-oriented action can influence how big the target looks.
Experiment 1
We recruited golfers after they played a round of golf
and asked them to estimate the size of the hole. We also
collected information on how well they played that day,
and found correlations between performance and apparent hole size.
Method
Participants. Forty-six golfers (1 female; age range 26–66, mean
age 5 45.9) at the Providence Golf Club in Richmond, VA, agreed
to participate. All gave informed consent.
Stimuli. Nine black paper circles were glued to a piece of white
poster board that was 76 cm wide and 51 cm tall with the smaller
circles in the top left corner and the larger ones on the bottom right.
J. K. Witt, jkwitt@purdue.edu
581
Copyright 2008 Psychonomic Society, Inc.
582 Witt, Linkenauger, Bakdash, and Proffitt
Diameters ranged unsystematically from 9 to 13 cm. The diameter
of a golf hole is 10.8 cm.
Procedure. After they had played a full round of golf, players
were recruited to participate in the experiment. They signed an informed consent agreement. They were shown the poster board with
the various circles and were asked to pick the circle that they thought
best corresponded to the size of the hole. Then, we collected information on their score for the course that day, their handicap, how many
putts they took on the 18th green, and how many strokes they took
on the 18th hole. For each of these measures, a lower score indicates
better performance or ability. Handicap is a number computed in golf
that is an assessment of a golfer’s ability. It is calculated as the mean
difference between a player’s score minus the par score for the course.
For example, a player who typically gets a 74 on courses with pars of
72 has a handicap of 2. Lower handicaps signify better players.
We also obtained three subjective reports on the participants’ performance. Participants rated their putting abilities in comparison
with others who shared their handicap, putting on that day relative
to their regular putting abilities, and play on that day relative to their
regular playing abilities on a scale from 1 to 7, where a 1 meant that
they had their best day and a 7 meant that they had their worst.
Results and Discussion
As is shown in Figure 1, players having lower scores
on the course that day judged the hole to be bigger than
did players who had higher scores (r 5 2.30, N 5 46,
p 5 .02, one-tailed, Spearman rank–order correlation). In
contrast, handicap, a measure of longer term playing ability, was not significantly correlated with judged hole size
(r 5 2.19, N 5 38, p 5 .12, one-tailed, Spearman rank–
order correlation).1 Recall that a lower handicap signifies
a better player. Combined, these results suggest that better
players did not perceive the hole as being bigger, but players that were playing better on that given day did perceive
the hole as bigger.
Furthermore, players who took fewer putts to get the
ball in the 18th hole judged it to be bigger than did players who took more putts (r 5 2.26, p 5 .04, one-tailed,
Spearman rank–order correlation). The correlation between total strokes on the 18th hole and its judged size
was not significant ( p 5 .14), implying that this effect
was specific to putting performance, for which hole size is
relevant. There were no significant correlations with any
of our subjective measures of performance ( ps . .2), so
self-assessed performance did not relate to apparent hole
size, whereas actual performance did.
Our results expand on earlier research with softball
players where we showed that batters who were hitting
better on a given day recalled the softball to be bigger
(Witt & Proffitt, 2005). In this experiment, golfers who
were playing better judged the size of the hole to be bigger,
thus demonstrating another link between perception and
performance. Although we found a significant correlation
between perception of hole size and golf performance on
that day (as assessed by course score), we did not find
a significant correlation between perception of hole size
and how good a player is (as assessed by handicap). This
result implies that a highly skilled player such as Tiger
Woods does not always see the hole as bigger just because
he is a terrific player, but rather, any person may perceive
the hole as being bigger when he or she is playing well.
However, a nonsignificant correlation is difficult to interpret, and a significant correlation might have been found
with more participants or a wider range of handicaps. In
our experiment, handicap ranged from 7 to 36 (range 5
29), whereas course score ranged from 77 to 123 (range 5
46). Because we measured only day-of performance in the
9
8
Perceived Size
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
60
80
100
120
140
Course Score
Figure 1. Apparent size of a golf hole as a function of score on the
course that day. Each circle represents 1 or more participants’ data. The
circles on the y-axis are drawn to preserve relative size of the stimuli. The
solid line is the correlation between course score and the circle selected
as best matching the size of the hole.
Golf Performance and Perception 583
Experiment 2
As with the softball study (Witt & Proffitt, 2005), we
cannot be sure whether performance influenced perceived
hole size or remembered hole size, because participants estimated size from memory. The next two studies addressed
this question. In Experiment 2, we sought to replicate the effect of performance on remembered hole size in a laboratory
context. Experiment 3 differed from Experiment 2 only in
that size judgments were made while the hole was in view.
We placed a store-purchased practice putting mat in the
laboratory. Putting performance was manipulated by having
some participants putt from very close to the hole and having others putt from farther away. We tested whether participants in the easy (close) condition would judge the hole to be
bigger than would participants in the hard (far) condition.
Method
Participants. Forty (15 male, 25 female) University of Virginia
students, ranging in age from 18 to 34, participated in this experiment either for a snack or to fulfill a research requirement for course
credit. All participants indicated that they would play golf righthanded and had normal or corrected-to-normal vision. All gave informed consent.
Stimuli and Materials. Participants chose one of two righthanded golf putters, which differed in length (0.89 and 0.93 m long).
The putting mat was 2.15 m long and 0.34 m wide. The mat sloped
upward at a 10º angle starting 0.42 m before the hole. The hole was
9.52 cm in diameter. Estimated hole size was collected in Microsoft
Paint using a standard computer mouse and keyboard.
Procedure. Participants were assigned to either the easy or the
hard condition in alternating order. For the hard condition, participants stood 2.15 m away from the front of the putting hole, and for
the easy condition, participants stood 0.4 m away from the hole.
Participants were instructed that, after some practice, they would
putt the ball 10 times. We asked participants to predict how many
putts they would make. We told them that if they made as many
as they predicted, they would receive their choice of a snack. They
were given 2 min alone to practice putting before attempting their
putts. After the participants had practiced, the experimenter told the
participants to take 10 putts. Upon completion of their putts, all participants were given their choice of snacks, regardless of whether
they made their predicted number of putts.
Participants were then directed into another room to perform a
visual matching task. They were instructed to sit in front of a Dell
laptop running Microsoft Paint, a simple drawing program that consists of a sketching area and several types of drawing tools such as
a paintbrush or shape tools. The sketching area was always blank to
start. Participants used the ellipse tool by holding down the shift key
and dragging the mouse to draw a filled-in black circle. They were
instructed to draw the circle to match the actual physical size of the
putting hole. They were encouraged to redraw until they were satisfied that their circle matched the size of the hole.
Results and Discussion
Not surprisingly, participants in the easy condition
(M 5 60.0%, SE 5 5.13%) predicted making more putts
than did those in the hard condition (M 5 38.3%, SE 5
3.44%) [t(38) 5 3.52, p , .01, one-tailed, d 5 0.55].
Also, a higher percentage of putts was made in the easy
condition (M 5 73.5%, SE 5 4.06%) than in the hard
condition (M 5 24.5%, SE 5 4.38%) [t(38) 5 8.206, p ,
.01, one-tailed, d 5 1.30].
More interestingly, participants in the easy condition
drew the circle bigger than did participants in the hard
condition (see Figure 2) [t(38) 5 1.69, p 5 .05, onetailed, d 5 0.27]. This result suggests that participants in
the easy condition perceived the hole to be bigger than
did participants in the hard condition, so they drew larger
circles as matching the size of the hole. Because putting
is more difficult from a farther distance and performance
was markedly worse in the hard condition relative to the
easy condition, these findings suggest that putting performance influences apparent hole size.
However, there are two concerns with this experiment.
First, participants had different views of the hole while
putting. Participants in the easy condition were closer to
the hole, so the hole subtended a larger visual angle and
exhibited less projected compression in its aspect ratio.
These different viewpoints may account for differences in
apparent hole size.
The second concern is that participants did not have
vision of the hole when they estimated its size. Thus, the
differences in apparent hole size may be due to an effect of
10
9.5
Apparent Hole Size (cm)
softball study as well (Witt & Proffitt, 2005), the present
experiment raises an interesting question: What aspects
of performance and performance capacity are related to
perception? In future studies, we plan to include longitudinal measures to see whether perceived size changes for
a player of a given handicap as daily performance levels
rise and fall.
We also found that apparent hole size was correlated
with putting performance on the last hole but not with
overall performance on the last hole, suggesting that these
effects are specific to the relevant task. Finally, apparent
size is not related to subjective measures of performance.
Players who think they are playing better do not necessarily recall the hole as appearing bigger.
9
8.5
8
7.5
Easy
Hard
Figure 2. Apparent size of the golf hole in the putting mat by
condition in Experiment 2 as measured by drawing circles in Microsoft Paint. The diameter of the hole was 9.52 cm. Participants
did not have vision of the hole when making their estimates. Error
bars represent one standard error of the mean.
584 Witt, Linkenauger, Bakdash, and Proffitt
Experiment 3
As in Experiment 2, participants putted from a near or
far distance. However, when these participants made size
judgments, they had full vision of the hole. Moreover, all
participants judged hole size from the same location and
thus had the same viewpoint of the hole while making
judgments of its size.
Method
Participants. Fifty (21 male, 29 female) University of Virginia
students, ranging in age from 17 to 34, participated in this experiment either for a snack or to fulfill a research requirement for
course credit. All participants golfed right-handed and had normal or
corrected-­to-normal vision. All gave informed consent.
Stimuli and Materials. The same golf putters and putting mat
were used as in Experiment 2. Estimated hole size was collected in
Microsoft Paint using a standard computer mouse and keyboard.
Procedure. The procedure was the same as in Experiment 2 except
that participants viewed the hole while estimating its size. After participants finished putting, they were instructed to sit in front of a Dell
desktop computer, which was situated beside the golf mat, approximately 1 m to the right of the putting hole. Participants were instructed
to use the ellipse tool in Microsoft Paint to draw a circle that was the
same size as the putting hole. Participants were allowed to look back
and forth between their drawing and the hole as much as they liked,
and they were encouraged to redraw the circle until they were satisfied
that the circle on the screen matched the size of the hole.
Results and Discussion
As in Experiment 2, participants predicted making
more putts in the easy condition (M 5 60.00%, SE 5
3.92%) than in the hard condition (M 5 36.80%, SE 5
3.25%) [t(48) 5 4.56, p , .01, one-tailed, d 5 0.65]. A
higher percentage of putts was made in the easy condition
(M 5 68.8%, SE 5 4.45%) than in the hard condition
(M 5 28.00%, SE 5 3.32%) [t(48) 5 7.36, p , .01, onetailed, d 5 1.04].
Participants in the easy condition drew the circle bigger than did the participants in the hard condition [t(48) 5
1.73, p 5 .05, one-tailed, d 5 0.24] (see Figure 3). Even
when participants had full vision of the hole, they perceived
its size differently. Thus, putting performance influences
perceived hole size and not just remembered hole size.
Participants in the two groups viewed the hole from different distances while putting, so a potential concern is
that the difference in viewing distance is responsible for
our effects. The present studies do not directly speak to
this issue. However, in Experiment 3, both groups viewed
the hole from the same distance when they judged size, so
the viewing perspective at the time when we collected our
dependent measure was the same for both groups. Thus,
our effects are likely due to differences in the putting task
and not to differences in viewing distance. An effect due
solely to viewing distance would produce results contrary
10.5
Perceived Hole Size (cm)
performance on memory rather than on perception. This
critique applies to Experiment 1 and to the finding that
batting performance influences apparent ball size (Witt
& Proffitt, 2005). Thus, in the last experiment, we ran the
same procedure as in Experiment 2 except that participants viewed the hole while making their size judgments.
10
9.5
9
8.5
Easy
Hard
Figure 3. Perceived size of the golf hole in the putting mat by
condition in Experiment 3 as measured by drawing circles in Microsoft Paint. The diameter of the hole was 9.52 cm. Participants
had vision of the hole when making their estimates. Error bars
represent one standard error of the mean.
to the findings of Experiment 1. Better golfers can typically make putts from farther away and the better golfers
probably viewed the hole from a farther distance, yet they
perceived the hole to be bigger.
General Discussion
In three experiments, we demonstrated that golfers perceive the size of the hole in relation to their golfing performance. In the first experiment, we asked golfers after
they played a full round of golf to judge the size of the golf
hole. We found that judged hole size was negatively correlated with the players’ performance that day. Players who
played better judged the hole to be bigger. This finding is
consistent with our early finding that softball players who
are batting better judge the ball as being bigger (Witt &
Proffitt, 2005).
However, although course score correlated with apparent hole size, handicap did not. Thus, perception may not
be a function of how good a player is, but rather of how
well that player is playing at that specific moment. Our
sample of golfers was limited to relatively unskilled golfers, so we are not sure that this statement would generalize
over the wider range of abilities of very skilled or professional golfers. In Experiment 1, the mean handicap was
18.2, and in Experiments 2 and 3, only 38% of all participants had experience with golf. It would be interesting
to see how golfers’ perceptions of the hole change from
day to day and whether the variation in perception differs
across levels of expertise.
Apparent cup size correlated with putting performance
on the last hole but not with overall performance on the
last hole, suggesting that these effects are specific to
the relevant task. The data from the last hole suggest that
the apparent size of the hole is influenced only by performance on tasks that directly involve the hole. In this case,
the only relevant task involving the hole’s size consisted
Golf Performance and Perception 585
of putting, not driving or hitting. Except for seemingly
miraculous shots in which the ball happens to go into the
cup from outside of the putting green, hole size becomes
relevant only when putting. Consequently, performance
on strokes other than putting ought not to contribute to
the apparent size of the golf cup.
Finally, in these studies, apparent size was not related to
subjective measures of performance. Players who thought
they were playing better did not necessarily report the hole
as appearing bigger. Only actual performance affected
the recalled size of the golf cup. As a result, the apparent
size of the cup may be independent of several traits of the
player, including, perhaps, their confidence, optimism, or
general attitude toward themselves. Because these traits
can affect performance (Stone, Lynch, Sjomeling, & Darley, 1999), one might think they would have also affected
perception. However, more detailed experiments would
be needed before making any definite claims about the
relationship between attitude and perception.
In the last two experiments, university students putted
golf balls on a putting mat from a location close to the
hole or one that was far from it. Then they judged the size
of the hole either from memory (Experiment 2) or while
still viewing the hole (Experiment 3). In both experiments,
participants who putted from the closer location drew the
matching circle to be bigger than participants who putted
from the far location. The results of Experiment 3 demonstrate that people’s putting performance can affect their
perception of the hole’s size, as opposed to just inducing
a memory bias.
Although these results suggest that a relationship exists
between performance and perception, the causal direction
of this finding is unclear. For example, do golfers putt better and, therefore, see the hole as bigger, or do they see the
hole as bigger and therefore putt better? The present experiments do not speak to this question; however, we speculate
that the relationship is reciprocal in such a way that perception and performance likely influence each other.
Our findings are consistent with other research showing
effects of action potential on perception. Targets placed
just beyond arm’s reach look closer when a perceiver intends to reach with a tool than when the perceiver intends
to reach without the tool (Witt & Proffitt, in press; Witt
et al., 2005). Hills look steeper (Bhalla & Proffitt, 1999)
and distances look farther (Proffitt et al., 2003) when the
perceiver wears a heavy backpack and thus will have to
exert more energy to walk. Similarly, targets look farther
away to people when they have to throw a heavy ball compared with a light ball (Witt et al., 2004). In all of these
experiments, the optical information was held constant,
yet perception varied depending on the perceiver’s ability
to perform the intended action.
In summary, our results demonstrate that people’s perceptions of target size are scaled by their current abilities
to act effectively on the target. In turn, golfers who are
playing better see the hole as bigger than do golfers who
are not playing as well.
Author Note
This research was supported by NIH Grant RO1MH075781-01A2 to
D.R.P. The authors thank Ray Ryan and the Providence Golf Club for
their assistance with data collection. Correspondence concerning this
article should be addressed to J. K. Witt, Department of Psychological
Sciences, Purdue University, 703 Third Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907
(e-mail: jkwitt@purdue.edu).
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Note
1. Eight participants did not have a handicap or did not report theirs.
(Manuscript received May 23, 2007;
revision accepted for publication December 4, 2007.)